TV woes!

Thought I'd treat ourselves to a nice new telly being as our Duetto came with an aerial and booster box ready installed, so purchased new TV plugged everything in and went to tune in and nothing  
Tried playing with the gain control, waggling leads but all to no avail so for some reason thought I'd have a look at the antenna, after struggling with mountains of heavy duty silicone that a PO had literally glued it in with found that I couldn't access anything useful like cable connection or the like so glued it back in place.
Next I bypassed the amp and got a handful of channels although too poor to watch so assumed it must be the amp so ordered a replacement which arrived today, changed the amp and yes you guessed it nothing! not even the handful of channels I had yesterday, tried the gain in different positions and still nothing, checked the cables for shorts between inner and braid all tested good so looks like I need a new antenna after all.
Anybody know if I can purchase just the antenna as it may be that my amp was OK after all and I now have a new one as well so I now have 2 amps and still no tv.
Graham

Your TV aerial needs to be tuned in every time you move.Avoid trees and close buildings.
Its a pain.

Micky

If its a flying saucer kind of aerial, thats normal. Theyre universally useless imho

TV couldn't find any stations at all, radio or TV so have ordered a replacement, judging by the amount of silicone around the dish stem and mounting base someone has been in there before and given up, just another in a long list of bodges and faults uncovered since we took over custody of this van. Just as well I'm able and qualified to carry out all these jobs or it would have cost me a fortune in labour charges!
Graham

When we had a 2003 Duetto with its Status flying saucer aerial it was always outperformed by a cheapo directional indoor aerial bought from Argus, even the unamplified one given a good score incidentally by Which. I'd stick it on the roof whilst standing on the seats, head through the Hekii roof light, and that was without having the aerial amplifier the Status aerial had. Why for goodness didn't A-S fit a Status directional aerial instead. I'd look where other vans were pointing their aerials for my guidance.

Lets be modern and real here, often at campsites you are likely to be in a rural setting and surrounded by trees and if the campsite hasn't got TV available on the mains pedestals, and if you really must watch TV then a 4G or soon 5G is surely the way forward, MiFi for example.

When camping we'll give TV a go, if null then there's always the radio, reading books, listening to music, DVDs if your TV has that feature etc.

PS: There are signal strength meters which help with the setting of directional aerials when camping. Also try things out at home where you can compare the van's TV signal strength with what you normally have from your home's roof aerial.

IanH wrote:If its a flying saucer kind of aerial, thats normal. Theyre universally useless imho

I agree they are, mostly due to them being omni-directional. The type the o/p needs is this one which is directional and that makes all the difference as you turn it to locate the strongest signal. 

Not cheap, but at least you will get a decent picture.

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Relaxez-Vous wrote:
Why for goodness didn't A-S fit a Status directional aerial instead. I'd look where other vans were pointing their aerials for my guidance.

Money......anything to save a few pence!

I’ve recently fitted a Status 570 as mentioned above in place of the flying saucer.
Chalk and cheese is all I can say, the 570 has performed beyond expectations, often no need to raise the pole or point at all to get the full complement of channels.

Similar to Relaxez-vous above, when we used to carry a TV we just had a small directional aerial which we'd mount on extendible awning pole dropped into a tube I had fixed to the roof ladder. A quick glance at nearby units would indicate which direction to point it and whether it should be vertical or horizontal polarisation. Nowadays there are apps to help with this. Our van didn't have any kind of fixed aerial, the onboard amp is connected to an external coax input socket, however we seldom needed that, just bringing the cable straight through a window.

For many years now however we haven't bother taking a TV, getting away from it was part of the holiday plus most of our travels in the van were in France and we certainly didn't want to watch their TV. We also carried a selection of DVD box sets which we could watch on the laptop, mainly old costume dramas and the M Hulot series which stand repeated viewings.

These days, Mrs B can keep up with her Aussi soapies streamed on her Chromebook and I have Prime Video on my Fire tablet, both using either a wi-fi hotspot on the mobile or campsite wi-fi where it's reasonably priced (which most French sites are). Mostly though we read e-books and enjoy the break from the relentless bad news and staged 'reality' shows.
However, each to their own and no disrespect to those who enjoy their TV.  

Was trying this on our driveway at home where a recent visit from a tv aerial installer remarked about our strong signal, will report on the new flying saucer when it lands and I've got it fitted. I had many years of tv viewing from omni aerials when at sea on a ship rolling around in the North Sea so know that they can work, a lot of the time it is down to the standard of the installation rather than the quality of the kit. We don't have a radio in our van at the moment after it killed the battery overnight and almost left us stranded, flat battery on an automatic isn't a lot of fun! will be watching our Hulot dvd's on our next trip though

Graham

The Teleco fitted to my van is a Status look-a-like. Seldom need to raise or rotate it.

inspiredron wrote:The Teleco fitted to my van is a Status look-a-like. Seldom need to raise or rotate it.

That was the surprising thing with my 570, it works much better than the flying saucer even if it’s not pointing directly at the transmitter.
Of course the other factor is that I have finally got rid of every bit of A/S cabling!

Dbvwt wrote:

inspiredron wrote:The Teleco fitted to my van is a Status look-a-like. Seldom need to raise or rotate it.

That was the surprising thing with my 570, it works much better than the flying saucer even if it’s not pointing directly at the transmitter.
Of course the other factor is that I have finally got rid of every bit of A/S cabling!

Know what you mean about the A/S cabling, our non functioning aerial still had the 5m of cable attached all bundled up exactly what the manufacturer says not to do!
The other thing that concerns me is the lack of fuse protection to any of the 12v circuits, except the ones I've installed which are all fused.
Graham

Dbvwt wrote:I’ve recently fitted a Status 570 as mentioned above in place of the flying saucer.
Chalk and cheese is all I can say, the 570 has performed beyond expectations, often no need to raise the pole or point at all to get the full complement of channels.

I'm adding this to the list of jobs to do once the warranty expires. However, the warranty being pretty useless anyway as it takes far too long to get anything fixed, perhaps sooner. So far it's worked out OK because wherever I've had a poor TV signal, the MiFi mobile signal has still been good enough for streaming HD TV.

My understanding (which may not be entirely correct) is that most main TV transmitters are horizontally polarised and most repeater TV transmitters (which typically are weaker and used in poor reception areas) are vertically polarised.  You've only got to look at the flying saucer aerial to see that it is probably going to be more effective working to a stronger horizontal main transmitter than a weaker vertical repeater.  I use an App to determine the best transmitter to use and its polarisation and bearing.  If it's vertical I find it is less likely to work with the saucer.  Having used a Vision Status in my last two caravans I contemplated replacing the AS fitted Maxview saucer with a Vision which is not only directional but can change its polarisation.  But I know the Vision is also defeated in low signal strength areas.   So the solution I came up with which is cheaper is to carry an un-amplified Maxview tri-boom aerial in the bottom of my wardrobe which I deploy when the flying saucer isn't good enough.  So far it's worked every time and is better than the Vision.

Hi  

Caraman wrote:My understanding (which may not be entirely correct) is that most main TV transmitters are horizontally polarized and most repeater TV transmitters (which typically are weaker and used in poor reception areas) are vertically polarized.  

If you check the Offcom web site you’ll see that’s still true. Most of the population is covered by the horizontally polarized main stations but if you go by land area, a lot of it is only covered by the vertically polarized relays.

Caraman wrote:  So the solution I came up with which is cheaper is to carry an un amplified Maxview tri-boom aerial in the bottom of my wardrobe

I agree, you’re much more likely to get a signal with the tri-boom and there is no reason why you can’t plug it into an aerial amp for even better performance if you need to (there will still be the odd dead spot though).  

Even the best caravan aerials are relatively low gain in the scheme of things. General domestic aerials will out perform them at much lower cost. I think the problem is that many people haven’t got the space to carry one or be can bothered with setting it up each time.

Brod

Tried the new aerial system on our latest road trip and although we couldn't get a signal on the site we stayed on, due to being surrounded by mountains, we did get a good result when out on a day trip, loads of channels including radio and data channels?
Just what are data channels?
Status 355 set up with VP3 amp, our new Cello 22" tv seems to be fine, no complaints so far, it has the sat tuner built in so maybe a sat dish might be on the wish list soon?
Graham

Sounds like you have the same tele as we have except a bit bigger.  I considered the free standing Sat option which price wise was somewhere between the Vision (incl fitting costs) and Tri-boom and would have taken up more space.  A problem with the Tri-boom is finding a good way of supporting it as it is quite large when folded out.  I made use of the cycle rack and it’s quite secure.

Hi

Grabea wrote:Just what are data channels?

A sort of a hybrid that appears as a TV channel but the picture comes via the Internet (think a sort of live Iplayer).  Some normal channels but since they are interactive tend to be used for “adult” content and some “dating” channels. To get them the TV needs to be connected to “tinternet”. I don’t think you’re missing much - not that I’ve watched them off course.    

Brod

Thanks Brod so I'm not missing out on anything then.
Graham

Caraman wrote:Sounds like you have the same tele as we have except a bit bigger.  I considered the free standing Sat option which price wise was somewhere between the Vision (incl fitting costs) and Tri-boom and would have taken up more space.  A problem with the Tri-boom is finding a good way of supporting it as it is quite large when folded out.  I made use of the cycle rack and it’s quite secure.

I'd thought of getting a freesat dish and sitting it on some kind of tripod pegged to the ground, the way our van rocks when we move around it would lose the sat signal all the time if it was mounted on the van!
We started looking at 19" but after comparing price and features went for the 22" which is physically only very slightly larger and fits nicely in the space in the van, in the end we took a chance on one of the small cosmetic mark sets from Amazon, when it arrived the small scratch which was mentioned was on the remote, the tv was perfect so we got a 22" for less than the 19"! happy days.
Graham